Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Forget We the People, we are run by the Wall Street criminal cartel

June 29, 1:56 PM

Author: Tim McCown, Philadelphia-Progressive-Examiner

Many Conservative blogs were all worked up about Cap and Trade and how that was going to jack up everyone's energy costs. First of all, you Conservatives aren"t so gullible that you still believe that our coin operated Congress being in the hands of Democrats instead Republicans matters, do you?

If you do, let me enlighten you with the truth. Toilet paper is worth more than the Environmental Bill that Democrats are being told will strike a major blow for global climate change, as you Conservatives are being told that taxes and costs of energy will go up. Do you see anything here?

Only in America could we repackage out and out bribery as legitimate Free Speech and pretend that campaign contributions don't pervert the actual will of the people every time. For Conservatives, nothing that would actually cost business anything is in that environmental legislation. The reason is that there is nothing in there that will actually do anything, and that was true before the legislation ever got out of committee. The drama was to fool us into believing that those of us who wanted change we could believe in, were getting change and when those energy bills go up as they surely will, Conservatives will believe it was because of this bill. People we are being had, Wall Street runs this show. It is all a smoke and mirrors pretense that we the people still have a say in government.

The first rule of Wall Street is that the Free Markets mean that they are free to cheat us, con us and steal from us and there are no rules, no laws and no consequences. Finance and loans have been some of the biggest swindles and bankers our biggest swindlers, in our history.

Take coal mining or share cropping for instance. The land owners and banks owned the land they rented you or the company town you lived in. They rented you your tools, they sold you the seeds to plant, they owned the scales to weigh your crop when harvested or your coal you had dug, and they owned the stores you could shop in. Somehow fancy that, you never made enough to pay off the bill. They didn't even pay you with money in many coal towns. They" loaned" you the difference between your crop or the coal you dug and the fraudulent expenses they stuck you with and charged you interest. They made money from your labor and off your labor. Now along comes Visa and Master Card so don't get carried away thinking times have changed all that much. With all the foreclosures the concept of company town is coming back with a vengeance.

I strongly recommend you read Matt Taibbi's article in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. It is the best piece of investigative journalism I have read in a long time. When you are finished you will be angry as hell but you will see clearly the truth of what we have been fed by Corporate America since that King of Cons, Ronald Reagan was in office. Oh it includes Bill Clinton too so it is bipartisan in placing blame where it belongs.

It is no accident that we have Tim Geithner at Treasury. Robert Rubin was sold to Bill Clinton using almost word for word what Rubin and Sanford Weil said when they sold Geithner to Obama, as the only one who can handle this economy. That is because he has been trained in how to keep the con job rolling as I have said before. His job is to find the next bubble to inflate and he just gave Wall Street a several trillion dollar pump to inflate it with. As he was instructed there are no rules or regulations to stop them. Thats how you handle the economy. Oh the recovery will look grand until the phony bubble pops and Middle Class America is left holding the empty bag yet again.

Wall Street didn't handle anything but our wallets as they have acted like Count Dracula sucking the economic life blood out of this country. Here is one of the cons exposed by Matt Taibbi. You have a dime so you borrow 90 cents. Then you take that dollar and borrow nine more, then you take that ten and borrow $90 then the $100 and borrow $900.00 and so on and so on until you have borrowed millions with one dime. That is the pillar upon which these crooks have built the American economy. That is certainly not building your foundation upon a bed of rock.

My personal favorite in the Taibbi article in Rolling Stone was the Dot.com con. You put worthlessascrap.com stock out there to the public. The CEO of worthlessascrap.com knows that other CEO's will get x amount of worthlessascrap stock at $8 dollars a share in exchange for their buying x amount more of worhtlessascrap stock for $25 dollars a share.

That purchase jumps the stock on the open market up to $25 dollars a share which all those in on the action knew so they can sell the stock they got for $8 to $10 dollars a share at a profit. The average Joe on E-trade doesn't have this insider information but he sees the stocks meteoric rise and he purchases it at $25 dollars a share hoping to make a killing, because idiots like Cramer say everything will just keep going up so buy.

The insiders also know that it is worthlessascrap literally. They bail knowing it has no value, with millions in profit. The average Joe lacks this information and loses his shirt because the stock was worthlessascrap. So Conservatives, still want to invest everyone's Social Security in this financial theft scheme. My retirement is in the trash They did this with stocks, housing, they even were a significant part of the reason, through speculation, that gas reached $4.00 a gallon. So Conservatives, when you argue some of us want to punish success the only successful entrepreneurship I see is fraud and deceit.

How do you get away with it?

You deregulate so there are no rules. When someone starts to question, you howl it will cost jobs and Democrats are robbing success etc.. We have been held for blackmail by these high priced crooks who scream it will cost jobs every time we begin to set limits on their criminal activities. Personally I'm tired of being held hostage.

We are not going to get health care reform, reform of the work place, reform of Wall Street or anything else until we get the money out of politics. Our privatized system of campaign finance is an invitation to being taken. As a nation we now have government of the Corporations by the Corporations and against the American people. And when our dimwit congressman and Senators try to claim no corporations can make donations and donations can't be over $2,000.00 dollars, here's how you do it. If the NRA or any other donor wants to give big bucks like say $100,000.00 to a candidate, you find fifty constituents and give each one $2,000.00 checks and have them write a donation on their personal accounts. On Federal election forms you have fifty individual donors just like the law says. The candidate of course knows who really buttered the bread

Dick Durbin was right, banks do really own the place.

Author: Tim McCown
Tim McCown is an Examiner from Philadelphia. You can see Tim's articles on Tim's Home Page. Click on title to go there; http://www.examiner.com/x-3629-Philadelphia-Progressive-Examiner

article; http://www.examiner.com/x-3629-Philadelphia-Progressive-Examiner~y2009m6d29-Forget-We-the-People-we-are-run-by-the-Wall-Street-criminal-cartel

17 Blackwater Defendants Plead Guilty and were Sentenced, 5 Plead Not Guilty and will go to Trial

Report from Blackwater 22 Court appearance in Galina IL

David Stocker
June 24, 2009

Galena County Courthouse, IL --"I am a third-generation farmer from Iowa. What I did on April 27 was patriotic, and I'm proud of it," defendant Chris Gaunt, 52, from Grinnell, IA, said in her statement before sentencing.

The 22 defendants in the April 27, 2009, Blackwater trespassing action were scheduled for hearing at 10 AM. By that time, the pubic gallery was about halffilled with friends and activists from the peace movement who had come to witness the next step in the process of “throwing a shoe” at Blackwater. On April 25-27, 2009, more than 100 people came to Stockton’s Unitarian Universalist Church to participate in a two-day conference/retreat on Blackwater/ Xe that included an address by author Jeremy Scahill and training for the civil disobedience action, which ended with the arrest of 22 brave souls who tried to serve moral bankruptcy papers and an eviction notice at the N IL Blackwater site. This event, along with actions in Potrero, CA and Moyock, NC, have dragged Blackwater into the national spotlight where its actions are receiving greater scrutiny than it would like. (...)

Blackwater/Xe has been persistently developing a training facility on 80 acres at Skunk Hollow Road near Stockton, Illinois. Without public invitation, Blackwater appeared as an armed force in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Blackwater has also gained lucrative contracts worth billions to perform border security in Southwestern USA and is presently operating in Iraq and Afghanistan under the rebranded title Xe.

As Rock Falls IL, defendant and peace activist Fred Turk, 71 pointed out to the court, “This is part of a B/Xe strategy—to be on the ground floor of corporatization of the national police force.”

The defendants in the Galena action finally entered the courtroom at 11:30 with their attorney Edward L. Osowski, a Chicago-based attorney, familiar with political trials after working on a number of SOA trials. After some awkwardness at seating all 22 defendants in the crowded space available, the "Choice of Plea" appearance began before
Judge Kevin Ward. All were asked if they were fully aware of the charges facing them. All replied that they understood.

The court first dealt with the defendants who wished to plead not guilty. Four defendants asked for a bench trial and entered pleas of not guilty. They were Roberta, 65, and Don, 67, Thurstin-Timmerman of Park Falls WI, (former Milwaukee CWers), Lee Jankowski, 50, itinerate CW home repair person, and Becky Lambert, 25, from the Winona, MN, CW. Their trial is scheduled for September 4 and they will be represented by Edward L. Osowski.

Defendant, Michael Walli, 60, from the Duluth MN, CW, pleaded not guilty buty requested a trial by jury. Walli wearing a bright orange T-shirt with the words “Close Guantanamo,” had traveled from Washington, DC, after appearing in court there pursuant to another civil disobedience action regarding the closing of Guantanamo. As previously agreed, Walli told the Judge while he appreciated his service thus far, he no longer wished to be represented by Edward Ozowski (Osowski had told the group earlier he would not be available for a jury trial) and asked for a court-appointed attorney. Walli told the judge he is a transient missionary with an income of less than $500 per year and had no means to hire an attorney. Judge Ward initiated the process of appointing an attorney for Michael, and his case was put on hold.

The remaining 17 defendants all pleaded “guilty” to a Class B Misdemeanor Criminal Trespass charge with a maximum penalty of $1500 and six months in jail, and a minimum penalty of “court supervision.” In the pre court exchanged between judge , the attorneys and the defendants, Judge Kevin Ward had let it be known that he was going to sentence all who pleaded guilty to pay a combined court cost and fine of $250 with a six-month unsupervised probation, about half of what the State's Attorney was recommending.

After accepting the guilty pleas of all 17 remaining defendants, each defendant was allowed to make a statement before sentencing. Many took the opportunity to speak out against Blackwater and gave reasons why they felt called to do civil disobedience.

New Hope Farm CW defendant, Mary Moody, 44, described coming to the courthouse in February to meet with officials of the county and advise them of plans for the impending action. “We shared information and acted with complete transparency. We followed our agreements. This is in stark contrast to Blackwater, a private corporation which trespasses in foreign nations, enters private homes and is alleged to have taken lives of innocent people. Blackwater violates its own contracts smuggling illegal weapons into and out of Iraq. My plea is to all courts and to all citizens that the same transparency be demanded of these corporate criminals as is being demanded of us who stand before you today.”

Mona Shaw, 58, of the Des Moines CW said, “As I stand here, my heart is filled with regret. Regret for every mother who holds a folded flag, regret for mothers who bury children for lack of healthcare or proper nutrition. I regret that we live in a moral climate where our leaders no longer work for us but rather serve Corporations. We believe that the people have a heart and soul and that the day is coming when truth rather than lies will prevail. However, what I don’t regret is what I did last April 27 at the N IL Blackwater site”

Defendant, Laurel Noblette, 22, of the Champaign IL CW described her motivation, “This action was a personal choice to intervene in the only non-violent way offered to me. We are community organizers, and we represent people without a voice. I accept the penalty in exchange for the opportunity to have you hear me say that Blackwater should be stopped.

Along with speaking out against Blackwater, and knowing that the Judge was inclined to fix a $250 sentence instead of any jail time, many of the defendants stated that as being members of Catholic Worker communities, living and serving the poor as volunteers, asked the Judge for leniency in any fines or penalties.

Two defendants; Frank Cordaro, 58, and Ed Boomer, 62, both Des Moines CWers, told the judge that they would refuse to pay any fines or court costs as a sign of solidarity with the poor. Cordaro told Judge Ward, “As a sign of standing with the poor we serve, who when in similar situations end up going to jail, more often than not, for lack of money to pay their finds and court cost, I will refuse to pay any fines or court costs that may come with my sentence today.”

At the end of defendants' statements Judge Ward sentenced 15 of the defendants, excluding Cordaro and Bloomer to pay court costs of $150 plus a punitive charge of $100. The judge told the defendants that the total fine of $250 must be paid on or before September 4, 2009, for the defendants to avoid further consequence. He also gave them six months unsupervised probation.

Turning his attention to Cordaro and Bloomer, the judge made note that he heard their stated refusal to pay any fines or court costs and subsequently warned them of unfavorable consequences should they fail to pay any of the penalties of their sentence. Then Judge Ward sentenced Cordaro and Bloomer to the same sentence he gave to the other 15 defendants.

The sentence given by Judge Ward, while seeming lenient, was still more than the minimum required by law. And, defendants were not permitted to perform community service in lieu of fine as some had requested.
-------------------------------------------------

Below list of the 17 defendants who plead guilty and sentenced to pay court costs of $150 plus a fine of $100 and were gave six month unsupervised probation.

Eric Anglada, LaMotte, IA, 29 yrs old - New Hope CW Farm
Ed Bloomer, Des Moines CW, 61 yrs old
Kenny Bishop, Champaign CW, 24 yrs old
Frank Cordaro, Des Moines CW, 58 yrs old
Tyler Chen, Champaign CW, 24 yrs old
Elton Davis, Des Moines IA, 47 yrs old - former DMCW
Chris Gaunt, Grinnell, IA, 52 yrs old
Carolyn Griffeth, St Louis CW, 36 yrs old
Lee Jankowski, Dubuque, IA CW, 50 yrs old
Benjamin Johnson, Dubuque CW, 25 yrs old
Chrissy Kirchhoefer, St Louis CW, 31 yrs old
Mike Leutgeb Munson, Rockford MN, 26 yrs old - former Winona CW
Mary Moody, LaMotte, IA, 44 yrs old - New Hope CW Farm
Laurel Nobilette, Champaign CW, 22 yrs old
Nick Pickrell, Kansas City CW, 27 yrs old
Mona Shaw, Des Moines CW, 57 yrs old
Chris Watson, Champaign CW, 22 yrs old
Fred Turk, Rock Falls, IL, 71 yrs old
--------------------------------------------------

List of the 3 defendants who plead not guilty and were given a bench trial date of Sept 4th.

Becky Lambert, Winona CW, 25 yrs old
Don Thurstin-Timmerman, Park Falls WI, 67 yrs old - former Milwaukee CW
Roberta Thurstin-Timmerman, Park Falls WI, 65 yrs old - former Milwaukee CW
---------------------------------------------------

Michael Walli, Duluth CW, 60 yrs old plead not guilty and asked for a jury trial and a public defendant attonrey. Future court dates to be determined.
posted by The Editors at 5:16 PM


http://thechristianradical.blogspot.com/2009/06/17-blackwater-defendants-plead-guilty.html

A Topika Ambulance Co. to Charge by the Pound as Critical Care Costs Nearly Double

Some overweight Topeka patients to pay more for ambulance use

The Associated Press

TOPEKA, Kan. - A Topeka company will begin charging some overweight and critical care patients more to ride in its ambulances.

The Shawnee County Commission on Monday agreed to allow American Medical Response to raise ambulance costs for critical care patients and overweight people from $629 to $1,172.

AMR director Ken Keller says the higher fees will allow the ambulance company to pay for the extra care technician and medical equipment needed for critical care patients.

And he says the company needed to increase its charges for overweight patients to pay for more manpower and transportation equipment, including extra large and reinforced cots and a winch to help technicians load the patients into the ambulance.

He says, in general, the company will charge more for those weighing over 350 pounds, but each individual patient's size will be evaluated.


http://www.kansas.com/topstories/story/873755.html

Ft. Riley Bribery; Kan. developer pleads guilty

By JOHN MILBURN
Associated Press Writer

TOPEKA, Kan. - A Kansas developer admitted Tuesday he tried to bribe a member of a Junction City commission to get support to build new housing for Fort Riley soldiers.

David Ray Freeman of Lawrence pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. Freeman's bid to develop the subdivisions were eventually approved, including one in which he reserved a nice lot in one of the subdivisions for himself.

The Army post, located 60 miles west of Topeka, will nearly double in soldiers to more than 18,500 by 2013. The Defense Department has asked surrounding communities to build additional housing, schools and other infrastructure to handle in influx.

"I gave money to a city commissioner of Junction City to influence projects that I was developing," Freeman told the court in Topeka.

Freeman, 45, has agreed to cooperate in the investigation of the bribes. Federal attorneys declined to comment about the scope of their investigation, if more indictments were coming or if any members of the Junction City Commission would be charged. The name of the commissioner hasn't been released, only referenced in court documents by a code name of "firefighter."

Freeman, who is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 29, faces up to 30 years in prison and a fine up to $1 million. He left the courtroom Tuesday without speaking to reporters.

Prosecutors say Freeman and other Lawrence residents formed Big D Development in May 2006, with Freeman as half-owner.

Within five months, the Junction City Commission approved two agreements worth a total of $12 million allowing Big D to build subdivisions to provide housing for the influx of soldiers.

The complaint said that in 2004, Freeman became friends with a Junction City commissioner, anticipating that the area might need to build more housing. By 2006, the complaint said, he was bragging to partners in Big D that he had a commissioner "in his pocket."

In 2005, the Defense Department announced plans to return the 1st Infantry Division headquarters to Kansas from Germany. Since then, new home subdivisions have been built in Junction City and Manhattan, the two largest communities near Fort Riley.

The complaint alleges that Freeman issued a $5,000 check in May 2006 to the Junction City commissioner's wife from the account of another business with which Freeman was involved. Then, in July, Freeman issued a second, $5,000 check to the commissioner from the account of a third business, the complaint said.

The city commission approved the development agreements in July and August 2006, according to the complaint, and Freeman later reserved a "choice" lot in one of the subdivisions.

In March 2007, the complaint said, Freeman had an assistant draw and cash a check for $9,000 and deliver the money to the Junction City commissioner at a rest stop between Junction City and Topeka.

It is against federal law to knowingly structure transactions to be less than $10,000 so that a financial institution won't report it to the government, which is required.

Much of the housing development remains unfinished. Because of the frequency of soldiers deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan over the past six years, many soldiers and their families haven't moved to the region and found permanent housing. However, the 1st Infantry Division is expecting another influx of about 2,500 soldiers in the coming months, which Army officials said should create a need for more homes and apartments


http://www.kansas.com/topstories/story/873565.html

Etheredge Update: Hearing July 20th, 2009

Thomas Etheredge hearing set for July 20

BY BILL WILSON
The Wichita Eagle

Wild West World founder Thomas Etheredge's oft-delayed preliminary hearing has been scheduled for 2 p.m. July 20 in Sedgwick County District Court.

Etheredge, 54, is charged with 10 counts of securities fraud for his activities raising private capital from 2005 to 2007 for the struggling theme park.

He opened the park on May 5, 2007, and closed it on July 9, 2007.

He remains in the Sedgwick County Jail on $1 million bond.

-----------
Bloggers Note: What! Still in jail? Cant even afford the lousy one-mil to spring himself out? Maybe he should ask ole' Bernie if he could go his bail. lol So here is another story of just another "poor little" rich man who got caught with his fingers in the cookie jar and lost his fortune.....as the song (and my mother used to) say, "riding high in april, shot down in may." Not to forget......

"Oh what tangled webs we weave when at first we practice to decieve."
S. Sphere


http://www.kansas.com/topstories/story/874154.html#none

Porker of the Month: Rep. Maxine Waters



Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has named



Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) Porker of the Month for provoking a tussle with House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) over her intention to obtain an earmark for the Maxine Waters Employment Preparation Center, a facility within the Los Angeles school system. Rep. Waters’ grandiose gesture is a reminder that Congress still has not banned the practice of earmarking taxpayer funds for pork projects, including monuments, academic facilities, roads, airports and water projects, that are named after themselves. Rep. Obey appears to grasp that such narcissistic expenditures fuel the negative image of Congress and is proactively trying to keep them out of the fiscal year 2010 appropriations bills, particularly since Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) has successfully attached amendments to ban such projects to several appropriations bills. To placate Rep. Waters' need for recognition and the desire of some members of Congress to leave behind a living legacy, even one that is built with pork-barrel earmarks, CAGW happily obliges, endowing Rep. Waters with the coveted June Porker of the Month.



Click on title above to go to "Citizens Against Gov't Waste" website to read more about the Porker of the Month Club and while you are there, be sure to visit the Porker Hall of Shame page;



http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=news_porkerofthemonth

WSU tuition to rise 8.5%; stimulus to offset some

BY Jeannine Koranda
Eagle Topeka bureau


TOPEKA — Students at state universities will see their tuition increase next year between 3.9 and 8.5 percent.

Wichita State University topped the list with an 8.5 percent rise, bringing tuition for an undergraduate student taking 15 hours to $2,248 a semester. That's an increase of $176 a semester.

The school plans to use federal stimulus money to help offset the increase.

"I don't like it," said Dale Neese, a second-year nursing student, referring to the increase. "There's nothing I can do about it."

WSU president Donald Beggs said the school will use $1.5 million in federal stimulus money to pay in-state students an automatic scholarship.

The money is part of $4.4 million the university will receive from the federal stimulus package. The remainder will go to maintenance projects that have been deferred because of the state budget crunch.

WSU is still working out the details but hopes to give in-state undergraduate students a scholarship of about $5.25 to $5.50 a credit hour.

Taking that scholarship into account, in-state students would pay about 4.5 percent more for tuition next year.

That's less than the 6 percent increase the school had originally requested in May.

"This is actually a better situation for our students," Beggs said.

On Thursday, the Board of Regents approved WSU's tuition raise as well as increases for the other five state universities.

Kansas State University's per-semester tuition rose the smallest percentage at 3.9 percent, meaning students will pay $3,093 for a semester, up from $2,977.

University of Kansas in-state tuition will jump 6 percent next year to $3,283 per semester, up from $3,097.

The school's "compact" tuition plan will increase 7 percent to $3,679. Under the program, students pay the same tuition for four years, but they start at a higher rate than standard tuition.

Despite the tuition increases and federal stimulus dollars, leaders at the state's universities have said the funds won't cover the cuts they've received.

WSU has already eliminated faculty, part-time lecturers and support staff to accommodate budget cuts, Beggs said. The tuition increase won't bring those back but could help prevent further cuts.

Donna Shank, the outgoing chairwoman of the Board of Regents, opposed revised tuition increases such as Wichita's proposal.

"I was not thrilled with the amounts from last month's meeting, so it really didn't make me inclined to approve even higher ones," she said after the meeting.

During the meeting, Shank noted that the state's budget woes were tied to Kansans' decreasing incomes and layoffs.

"People are losing their jobs and are not able to pay for school now more than ever," she said.

Other regents noted that the increases were needed to ensure state schools offered a quality education.

"It's a great buy to go to school in Kansas, in all of our regent schools, but we need more money," said regent Dan Lykins.

Regent Christine Downey-Schmidt saw quality higher education as part of the state's solution to the current economic woes.

"The only way this state will lower taxes and increase the tax base is if we educate students with a higher level of skills," she said.


http://www.kansas.com/topstories/story/868436.html
Goldman Manipulation: The Rats Respond












From Jr. Deputy Accountant;

Posted: 28 Jun 2009 09:20 PM PDT

By now you've heard of Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone piece on rampant Goldman manipulation. Goldman certainly has.

Marching out the clowns to Reuters' Felix Salmon, GS insists that everything it does is above the board under current regulations. Well of course it is. We argue that the regulations are built with Goldman in mind, idiots. Great argument though from GS' Lucas van Praag:


Having read your piece about Matt Taibbi’s article in Rolling Stone, I wanted to set the record straight, particularly about “regulatory capture”.

Background: Under the Commodity Exchange Act, the CFTC (for agricultural futures) or exchanges (for energy/metals futures) established speculative position limits. As much as anything else, the limits are intended to prevent market imbalances that would result in failures of the ultimate settlement of the futures contracts.

The CFTC rules exempt “bona fide hedging” transactions from these spec limits. A bona fide hedging transaction was originally understood to be an actual producer/consumer who was selling or buying the underlying commodity and wanted to hedge risk of the price moving up or down. In 1991, J. Aron wanted to enter into one of its first commodity index swap transactions with a pension fund. In order to hedge our exposure on the swap, we wanted to buy futures on the commodities in the index. We applied to the CFTC for exemption from position limits on the theory that even if we weren’t buying the commodity, we had offsetting exposure (in our swap) that put us in a balanced/price neutral position. The CFTC agreed with our argument and granted exemption. By the way, each of the then Commissioners signed off, so it was hardly a secret…

The CFTC published a report in August 2008, indicating that there were few instances when entities would have exceeded spec limits, had they applied to OTC positions.

Yesterday, as you probably know, the Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations issued a report on wheat futures in which they concluded that divergence between prices for actual wheat v. wheat futures is being caused solely by index investment. The Committee’s recommendation is that hedge exemptions which support indices should be phased out.

Not quite so recently, the elimination of Glass Steagall doesn’t exactly provide a robust argument for regulatory capture. And Taibbi’s bubble case doesn’t stand up to serious scrutiny either. To give just two examples, even with the worst will in the world, the blame for creating the internet bubble cannot credibly be laid at our door, and we could hardly be described as having been a major player in the mortgage market, unlike so many of our current and former competitors.

Taibbi’s article is a compilation of just about every conspiracy theory ever dreamed up about Goldman Sachs, but what real substance is there to support the theories?

We reject the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts, and we are painfully conscious of the importance of being a force for good.

And so Goldman shrinks off, defeated, allowing JPM to reign as top rat?

Monday, June 29, 2009

Another Dirty Politician Exposed: Monica Conyers Off to Jail?

Monica Conyers,













wife of powerful Democratic congressman John Conyers,












resigned from the Detroit city council Monday after admitting she took cash bribes in exchange for her vote on a city contract.

Monday, June 29, 2009

DETROIT -- Detroit city councilwoman Monica Conyers has resigned from office after admitting she took cash bribes from a Houston-based company in exchange for her vote on a lucrative city contract.

Conyers, the wife of powerful Democratic congressman John Conyers, submitted her letter of resignation to the city clerk's office Monday. Her resignation takes effect July 6.

The 44-year-old Conyers admitted she took money from Synagro Technologies in 2007 in exchange for her vote on a city sludge contract. Prosecutors said John Conyers knew nothing of his wife's wrongdoing.

Monica Conyers faces up to five years in prison at her sentencing. She did not immediately respond to a phone message Monday seeking comment.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/29/monica-conyers-resigns-detroit-city-council-following-bribery-conviction/

Bernard Madoff sentenced to 150 years for vast fraud, likely to remain imprisoned for life

By TOM HAYS and LARRY NEUMEISTER AP

Last update: June 29, 2009 - 3:32 PM

NEW YORK - A federal judge rejected Bernard Madoff's plea for leniency Monday, sentencing the 71-year-old swindler to spend the rest of his life in prison for an "extraordinarily evil" fraud that took a "staggering toll" on thousands of victims.

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin cited the unprecedented nature of the multibillion-dollar fraud as he sentenced Madoff to the maximum of 150 years in prison, a term comparable only to those given in the past to terrorists, traitors and the most violent criminals. There is no parole in federal prison so Madoff will most likely die there.

"Here the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff's crimes were extraordinarily evil and that this kind of manipulation of the system is not just a bloodless crime that takes place on paper, but one instead that takes a staggering toll," said Chin.

The massive Ponzi scheme run by Madoff since at least the early 1990s demolished the life savings of thousands of people, wrecked charities and shook confidence in the U.S. financial system.

The sentence reflected a growing tendency over the last decade to give white-collar criminals lengthy prison terms. But nothing before has come close to the time given Madoff — an outcome that prompted scattered applause and whoops from a group of burned former clients in a packed Manhattan courtroom.

The judge noted that not one of the more than 100 letters he received supported Madoff or described any good deeds he had done.

"The absence of such support is telling," Chin said.

Chin announced the sentence with Madoff standing at the defense table, wearing a dark suit, white shirt and a tie, and looking thinner than his last court appearance in March. He gave no noticeable reaction when the sentence was announced.

He also showed no emotion though he looked down earlier in the hearing as he listened to nine victims spend nearly an hour venting their despair and anger. Some openly wept or raised their voices, labeling Madoff a "monster," "a true beast" and an "evil low-life."

"Life has been a living hell. It feels like the nightmare we can't wake from," said Carla Hirshhorn.

"He stole from the rich. He stole from the poor. He stole from the in between. He had no values," said Tom Fitzmaurice. "He cheated his victims out of their money so he and his wife Ruth could live a life of luxury beyond belief."

Dominic Ambrosino called it an "indescribably heinous crime" and urged a long prison sentence so he "will know he is imprisoned in much the same way he imprisoned us and others."

He added: "In a sense, I would like somebody in the court today to tell me how long is my sentence."

Sheryl Weinstein, a certified accountant, said Madoff was effective because he seemed normal.

"But underneath the facade is a true beast," she said. "He should not be given the opportunity to blend so seamlessly into our society again."

When asked by the judge whether he had anything to say, Madoff slowly stood, leaned forward on the defense table and spoke in a monotone for about 10 minutes. At various times, he referred to his monumental fraud as a "problem," "an error of judgment" and "a tragic mistake."

He claimed he and his wife were tormented, saying she "cries herself to sleep every night, knowing all the pain and suffering I have caused," he said. "That's something I live with, as well."

He then finally looked at the victims lining the first row of the gallery.

"I will turn and face you," he said mechanically. "I'm sorry. I know that doesn't help you."

His immediately family did not attend the sentencing. But Ruth Madoff — often a target of victims' scorn since her husband's arrest — broke her silence afterward by issuing a statement through her lawyer. She said she, too, had been misled.

"I am embarrassed and ashamed," she said. "Like everyone else, I feel betrayed and confused. The man who committed this horrible fraud is not the man whom I have known for all these years."

Prosecutor Lisa Baroni said Madoff deserved a life sentence because he "stole ruthlessly and without remorse."

Outside court, some victims said it was time to move on.

"He stole my money. He didn't steal my life," said Ron Weinstein, whose wife spoke in court. "I'm not going to sit around and mope about it."

Madoff, who has been jailed since March, already has taken a severe financial hit: Last week, a judge issued a preliminary $171 billion forfeiture order stripping Madoff of all his personal property, including real estate, investments, and $80 million in assets his wife Ruth had claimed were hers. The order left her with $2.5 million that couldn't be tied to the fraud.

The terms require the Madoffs to sell a $7 million Manhattan apartment where Ruth Madoff still lives. An $11 million estate in Palm Beach, Fla., a $4 million home in Montauk and a $2.2 million boat will be put on the market as well.

Before Madoff became a symbol of Wall Street greed, he earned a reputation as a trusted money manager with a Midas touch. Even as the market fluctuated, clients of his secretive investment advisory business — from Florida retirees to celebrities such as Steven Spielberg, actor Kevin Bacon and Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax — for decades enjoyed steady double-digit returns.

But late last year, Madoff made a dramatic confession: Authorities say he pulled his sons aside and told them it was "all just one big lie."

Madoff pleaded guilty in March to securities fraud and other charges, saying he was "deeply sorry and ashamed." He insisted that he acted alone, describing a separate wholesale stock-trading firm run by his sons and brother as honest and legitimate.

Aside from an accountant accused of cooking Madoff's books, no one else has been criminally charged. But the family, including his wife, and brokerage firms who recruited investors have come under intense scrutiny by the FBI, regulators and a court-appointed trustee overseeing the liquidation of Madoff's assets.

The trustee and prosecutors have sought to go after assets to compensate thousands of victims who have filed claims against Madoff. How much is available to pay them remains unknown, though it's expected to be only a fraction of the astronomical losses associated with the fraud.

The $171 billion forfeiture figure used by prosecutors merely mirrors the amount they estimate that, over decades, "flowed into the principal account to perpetrate the Ponzi scheme." The statements sent to investors showing their accounts were worth as much as $65 billion were fiction.

The investigation has found that in reality, Madoff never made any investments, instead using the money from new investors to pay returns to existing clients — and to finance a lavish lifestyle for his family. The actual loss so far has been put at $13.2 billion. But the judge said that was a conservative estimate and noted that even Madoff told his sons in December it was a $50 billion fraud.

He also showed no emotion though he looked down earlier in the hearing as he listened to nine victims spend nearly an hour venting their despair and anger. Some openly wept or raised their voices, labeling Madoff a "monster," "a true beast" and an "evil low-life."

"Life has been a living hell. It feels like the nightmare we can't wake from," said Carla Hirshhorn.

"He stole from the rich. He stole from the poor. He stole from the in between. He had no values," said Tom Fitzmaurice. "He cheated his victims out of their money so he and his wife Ruth could live a life of luxury beyond belief."

Dominic Ambrosino called it an "indescribably heinous crime" and urged a long prison sentence so he "will know he is imprisoned in much the same way he imprisoned us and others."

He added: "In a sense, I would like somebody in the court today to tell me how long is my sentence."

Sheryl Weinstein, a certified accountant, said Madoff was effective because he seemed normal.

"But underneath the facade is a true beast," she said. "He should not be given the opportunity to blend so seamlessly into our society again."

When asked by the judge whether he had anything to say, Madoff slowly stood, leaned forward on the defense table and spoke in a monotone for about 10 minutes. At various times, he referred to his monumental fraud as a "problem," "an error of judgment" and "a tragic mistake."

He claimed he and his wife were tormented, saying she "cries herself to sleep every night, knowing all the pain and suffering I have caused," he said. "That's something I live with, as well."

He then finally looked at the victims lining the first row of the gallery.

"I will turn and face you," he said mechanically. "I'm sorry. I know that doesn't help you."

His immediately family did not attend the sentencing. But Ruth Madoff — often a target of victims' scorn since her husband's arrest — broke her silence afterward by issuing a statement through her lawyer. She said she, too, had been misled.

"I am embarrassed and ashamed," she said. "Like everyone else, I feel betrayed and confused. The man who committed this horrible fraud is not the man whom I have known for all these years."

Prosecutor Lisa Baroni said Madoff deserved a life sentence because he "stole ruthlessly and without remorse."

Outside court, some victims said it was time to move on.

"He stole my money. He didn't steal my life," said Ron Weinstein, whose wife spoke in court. "I'm not going to sit around and mope about it."

Madoff, who has been jailed since March, already has taken a severe financial hit: Last week, a judge issued a preliminary $171 billion forfeiture order stripping Madoff of all his personal property, including real estate, investments, and $80 million in assets his wife Ruth had claimed were hers. The order left her with $2.5 million that couldn't be tied to the fraud.

The terms require the Madoffs to sell a $7 million Manhattan apartment where Ruth Madoff still lives. An $11 million estate in Palm Beach, Fla., a $4 million home in Montauk and a $2.2 million boat will be put on the market as well.

Before Madoff became a symbol of Wall Street greed, he earned a reputation as a trusted money manager with a Midas touch. Even as the market fluctuated, clients of his secretive investment advisory business — from Florida retirees to celebrities such as Steven Spielberg, actor Kevin Bacon and Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax — for decades enjoyed steady double-digit returns.

But late last year, Madoff made a dramatic confession: Authorities say he pulled his sons aside and told them it was "all just one big lie."

Madoff pleaded guilty in March to securities fraud and other charges, saying he was "deeply sorry and ashamed." He insisted that he acted alone, describing a separate wholesale stock-trading firm run by his sons and brother as honest and legitimate.

Aside from an accountant accused of cooking Madoff's books, no one else has been criminally charged. But the family, including his wife, and brokerage firms who recruited investors have come under intense scrutiny by the FBI, regulators and a court-appointed trustee overseeing the liquidation of Madoff's assets.

The trustee and prosecutors have sought to go after assets to compensate thousands of victims who have filed claims against Madoff. How much is available to pay them remains unknown, though it's expected to be only a fraction of the astronomical losses associated with the fraud.

The $171 billion forfeiture figure used by prosecutors merely mirrors the amount they estimate that, over decades, "flowed into the principal account to perpetrate the Ponzi scheme." The statements sent to investors showing their accounts were worth as much as $65 billion were fiction.

The investigation has found that in reality, Madoff never made any investments, instead using the money from new investors to pay returns to existing clients — and to finance a lavish lifestyle for his family. The actual loss so far has been put at $13.2 billion. But the judge said that was a conservative estimate and noted that even Madoff told his sons in December it was a $50 billion fraud.

Click on title above to see article and leave comments;
http://www.startribune.com/business/49424027.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUX

Heres mine;

Gamblers Lament & Retributative Justice

As for the "Crying Victims," ..call me cold-hearted but I dont feel sorry for gamblers who lose their money. Also, who are these "poor" he supposedly robbed? I dont know of any poor folk (and I do know alot of them as am one myself) who can afford to play the market. They generally stick to church bingos, state lotteries, and local horse & dogs tracks and the like, to gamble away their money. I mean common now, really,...who ever heard of a truely poor person with a "portfolio" of any kind? In any case, I do not care for or feel sorry for the "poor little" sobbing-rich who dont give a dam about the rest of the world, regardless. If bad things happen to them, like going broke, being "found-out," or dying early, I attribute it to retributative justice and applaud it.

Another thought. I wonder if any of these "victims" will be eligible for compensation through any Crime Victims Assistance Program? If so, I wonder who will pay for it (yeah right)


posted by madangry on Jun. 29, 09 at 4:38 PM |

An Interesting Insight; Greed is NOT a Good Thing

Alistair Nicholas | Sunday, 12 October 2008

Is capitalism dead or just flat-lining?

The world financial crisis shows that a system built on greed cannot work.
It is 79 years since the Great Depression. Some fear that this week's chaos in the financial world means that the curtains are rising on Great Depression II. I don’t have a crystal ball, but I’m sure the immediate future is grim. At the very least we are in for a long and deep recession and our medicine will be very bitter indeed.

Clearly the style of capitalism which has dominated world markets for the last 20 years or so is flatlining. The question now is whether it is worth resuscitating. The answer must be Yes – but only if we jettison the “greed is good” ideology made famous by the slimy character Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film Wall Street. That was a movie. In real life it was the philosophy of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman.

Friedman was probably the greatest economist of the 20th century. He influenced Ronald Reagan in the US, Margaret Thatcher in the UK, Brian Mulroney in Canada, and Paul Keating in Australia and his ideas led to critical economic reform in each of their countries. These economies were made stronger by following much of Friedman’s economic rationalism.

But at the heart of Friedman’s thought was the idea that greed is good, that greed works because it drives people to succeed. The reality, as we can now see, is that greed, in its truest sense, does not work.

A deadly sin

I have no doubt that greed is the cause of the current crisis. It was the greed of those who took easy money to buy houses beyond their means and the greed of bankers who lent to people borrowing beyond their means. The depth of this depravity can be seen in the Wall Street bankers who were collecting salaries over US$100 million per year even as their banks were collapsing.

Right now, even as the dominoes fall, disciples of Friedman are still contending that the culprit is not capitalist greed but excessive government regulation. However, while poor legislation and regulation may have contributed to the subprime mortgage market crisis that sparked the conflagration, it is absurd to suggest that the solution is merely a less regulated market.

Friedmanistas claim that the US subprime mortgage crisis didn't happen in markets like Australia and the EU because their consumers are more sophisticated. Nothing could be further from the truth. Australians and Europeans are not smarter; they were protected by more stringent regulatory frameworks. If foreign banks have been dragged into the American crisis, it was mainly because they had joined the orgy on Wall Street.

Less regulation may be a good thing; but good regulation trumps it any day. How many ordinary Americans have to lose their jobs and homes before the ideology of laissez-faire capitalism is finally debunked?

Greed needs to be kept in check. Governments the world over should take the matter of bank regulation more seriously. The US’s subprime mortgage mess was created by politicians pandering to the not-unreasonable desire of Americans to own their own homes. But Congressmen who are currently skewering greedy Wall Street bankers should have protected ordinary consumers aspiring to home ownership. Their negligence points to a failure of leadership that reaches to the very top of the American political totem pole.

Tough choices

So, should governments be putting together rescue packages like the US Federal Reserve’s US$800 billion one to save the banks? Aren't these rescue packages throwing good money after bad? After all, it was bad, even unethical, business decisions that have sunk the biggest financial institutions. If only that money were available now to help the people who are losing their homes, who face unemployment and who need to feed and educate their children.

But leaving the financial institutions that created the mess to stew in their folly is not a solution.

The viability of the world’s banking system needs to be ensured. If the banking crisis gets worse and more banks go under, it will be harder for businesses, big and small, to expand. Markets -- which ultimately thrive on confidence -- will shrink. That will mean more job losses and more pain. It could bring the world to Great Depression II, complete with soup kitchens and Hoovervilles. Right now, not bailing out the banks and other financial institutions is unthinkable.

Modern day capitalism may well be wanting. But – to paraphrase Winston Churchill’s description of democracy – it is the worst economic system except for all the others. The Great Depression played a part in the rise of communism, socialism, fascism and Nazism in the 1930s. That is, I am sure, not an outcome many would want from this crisis.

Saving the financial institutions that caused this crisis is the only way to keep the world from sliding into worse turmoil. But we have to learn from this calamity. Greed is not good. We need to inoculate our children against idolising Gordon Gekko. And we need to demand that governments regulate the markets more tightly . Capitalism works; but not when it is based on every man for himself. We need to find our way to a capitalism based on values and virtue.

Alistair Nicholas lives in Beijing where he runs a consultancy firm. He has been an economic researcher, political adviser, and Australian diplomat. In his consultancy he advises international corporations on business ethics and communications in China. He is the co-author of a study on the privatisation of welfare in Australia.


http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/is_capitalism_dead_or_just_flat_lining/

A Total "Gangster Gov't' & The New GM (Gov't Mtrs.) Car-tel

by Rep. Michele Bachmann, who apparently is againt "Gangster-Gov't" but is very much FOR Big-Oil, as is the authress of this 08' article; (sorry but the links below are not "clickable" so you will have to cut & paste them into your web-browser to get them to work)

"Drill Here, Drill Now." http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=M2E3MWJmNGEzYmQxMGQzYzExMGQ1OWJjMWU2Mzg3ZjU=

Related Article; July 26, 2009

Not a Good Week for New Holes;
http://wonchahepme.blogspot.com/2008/07/not-good-week-for-more-holes.html

Click on title above to see Michele's vid against the GM gov't take-over and what she calls the new "Gangster Govt." (If our Govt is full of gangsters, what does that make BigOil - nothing less than the MOB BOSS of it all! )

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Members of US House Financial Services Committee Snapped Up or Dumped Bank Stocks as Bottom Fell Out of Market

Bloggers Note: Isnt this exactly what Martha Stewart went to prison for?

Thursday 25 June 2009

by: Stephen Koff and Sabrina Eaton; @ The Cleveland Plain Dealer



The day before the House passed the financial rescue package, Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite of Florida grabbed up Citigroup stock.

Washington - As financial markets tumbled and the government worked to stave off panic by pumping billions of dollars into banks last fall, several members of Congress who oversee the banking industry were grabbing up or dumping bank stocks.

Anticipating bargains or profits or just trying to unload before the bottom fell out, these members of the House Financial Services Committee or brokers on their behalf were buying and selling stocks including Bank of America and Citigroup - some of the very corporations their committee would later rap for greed, a Plain Dealer examination of congressional stock market transactions shows.

Financial disclosure records show that some of these Financial Services Committee members, including Ohio Rep. Charlie Wilson, made bank stock trades on the same day the banks were getting a government bailout from a program Congress approved. The transactions may not have been illegal or against congressional rules, but securities attorneys and congressional watchdog groups say they raise flags about the appearance of conflicts of interest.

"I don't think that any of these people should be owning these types of financial instruments," said Brian Biggins, a Cleveland securities lawyer and former stock brokerage manager. "I'm not saying they shouldn't be in the stock market. But if they're on the banking committee and trading in these kinds of stocks, I don't think that's right."

For example, Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, a Florida Republican, bought Citigroup stock valued between $1,001 and $15,000 on Oct. 2, the day before the House passed the financial rescue bill and President George W. Bush signed it into law, records show. She opposed the bill.

Eleven days later, she bought $1,001 to $15,000 worth of Bank of America stock. It was on the same day that then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told leading banks that he expected them to accept billions in bailout money to prevent a financial meltdown.

Brown-Waite, who has since left the committee to join the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, and her spokeswoman would not comment for this article. The precise value of her investments is not publicly known because financial disclosure reports provide only broad ranges, although some members include detailed brokerage reports.

Wilson, a Democrat from the eastern Ohio town of Bridgeport, sold between $15,001 and $50,000 worth of Huntington Bancshares stock on Nov. 14, the same day Huntington got $1.4 billion in bailout money from the federal Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, records show. Wilson's transactions over the course of last autumn also included Bank of America and BB&T, both beneficiaries of the bank rescue program that Treasury implemented after congressional passage.

Wilson's spokeswoman said the congressman did not personally pick these trades because he leaves day-to-day investment decisions to a money manager who uses a proprietary model in selecting securities to buy or sell.

"To be clear, Mr. Wilson doesn't know about the trades ahead of time or even as they're being made," said spokeswoman Hillary Wicai Viers.

A spokesman for Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat also on the Financial Services Committee, said she similarly leaves transactions solely to the discretion of account managers. McCarthy's trades included a $2,275 purchase of bailout recipient J.P. Morgan Chase while Congress was still hammering out its rescue bill.

Another member of the Financial Services Committee, Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier of California, said on a recent financial disclosure report that she bought up to $15,000 in Citigroup stock on Nov. 7. That was 10 days after the bank got a $25 billion bailout.

Her office now says the report was filed in error, the transaction should have been listed as her husband's - and she wishes he had not made it.

"When I brought it up with her, she said it was Barry's purchase and she didn't know about it but she would have disagreed with it at the time had she known about it," Speier spokesman Mike Larsen said.

Her husband wasn't the only committee spouse trading on bank stocks.

The stockbroker husband of West Virginia's Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican, sold more than $100,000 in Citigroup stock in several transactions late last year. His brokerage firm was owned by Citigroup and his compensation included Citigroup stock. A Capito spokesman said the House Ethics Committee gave her verbal approval to join the committee despite her husband's job.

Another committee member, Illinois Republican Judith Biggert, whose husband sold Wells Fargo stock while Congress was helping to shape the rescue bill, said she does not discuss stock transactions with her spouse.

"I wouldn't have the vaguest idea" why he sold at that time "because we don't discuss our stocks," said Biggert. "We have a financial group in Chicago, and they take care of all of that."

Some of these stock sales enabled committee members or their families to cut losses before the market continued its slide. Other trades proved to be particularly ill-timed. Citigroup stock, for example, closed at $22.50 per share the day Brown-Waite bought it. Now it's hovering around $3.

Many details about the massive financial bailout last fall were widely known outside Capitol Hill. Yet members of the Financial Services Committee were privy to closed-door discussions, staff briefings and political horse-trading decisions between political parties, Congress and the White House. Banks lobbied Congress and the administration heavily.

Banks that received bailout money spent $77 million on lobbying and $37 million on federal campaign contributions last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The center found that the banks spending the heaviest got the biggest rescue packages.

There has been no direct evidence that this allowed members to engage in insider trading. But when lawmakers overseeing banks also buy and sell bank stocks, it can create "the appearance of a problem," said Anthony J. Hartman, a Cleveland securities attorney.

"I do a lot of different types of litigation, and I just don't think anybody ought to be putting themselves in a situation where as an elected official, I can be suspect of what they are doing," Hartman said.

The issue of appearances is complicated, said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility in Ethics in Washington, because "we can't say that because you're a member of Congress you can't buy or sell any stocks at all."

But she added, "I do think it's more troubling on an oversight committee, particularly Financial Services."


http://www.truthout.org/062809Y?n

JP Morgan Overlooks AMCOREs' 20M Default



June 26, 2009

AMCORE Announces Agreement and Consent Order With Regulators; Expects Significantly Lower Second Quarter Loan Loss Provision

ROCKFORD, Ill., Jun 26, 2009 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) -- AMCORE Financial, Inc. (AMFI), holding company of AMCORE Bank, today announced that the holding company and its subsidiary have entered into agreements with regulators designed to strengthen and improve the Bank's financial condition and operations. Specifically, the holding company has entered into a Written Agreement with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the Bank has agreed to the issuance of a Consent Order with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

"The AMCORE management team is taking appropriate actions that address today's economic challenges," said William R. McManaman, Chairman and CEO of AMCORE. "Over the last several quarters, we have taken steps to reduce operating expenses, rebuild the credit management practices, strengthen the lending function and reduce our concentration in construction and development loans. The regulatory agreement and order announced today support the continued execution of our strategy and establish a framework against which we will work to make further improvements. From an operational perspective, we believe growth of non-performing loans this quarter has decreased from recent quarters and we expect a significantly lower provision for loan loss reserves in the second quarter."

The agreement and order are the result of ongoing discussions between regulators and AMCORE's management team. In general, the agreement and order contain requirements to develop plans to raise capital and to revise and maintain a liquidity risk management program. As a result of the agreement and order, AMCORE Financial, Inc., the parent company, is in default under its credit agreement with JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., related to a $20 million credit facility. JPMorgan has advised the Company that it does not expect to pursue any remedies at this time. Both parties are working cooperatively. AMCORE's ability to serve its customers will not be impacted by these actions and customer deposits remain fully insured to the highest limits set by the FDIC. Management will continue to coordinate with their primary regulator and work to achieve the designated capital ratios and maintain a comprehensive liquidity risk management program.

McManaman said, "We believe the regulators have seen the considerable progress that management has achieved in addressing the problems it faces and remain supportive of our continued efforts. We are committed to delivering the highest quality service to our customers and leveraging our expertise across our organization. We have been steadfastly doing so since 1910."

ABOUT AMCORE

AMCORE Financial, Inc. is headquartered in Northern Illinois and has banking assets of $5.3 billion with 74 locations in Illinois and Wisconsin. AMCORE provides a full range of consumer and commercial banking services, a variety of mortgage lending products and wealth management services including trust, brokerage, private banking, financial planning, investment management, insurance and comprehensive retirement plan services.

AMCORE common stock is listed on The NASDAQ Stock Market under the symbol "AMFI." Further information about AMCORE Financial, Inc. can be found at the Company's website at www.AMCORE.com.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release contains, and our periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and written or oral statements made by the Company's officers and directors to the press, potential investors, securities analysts and others will contain, forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934, and the Company intends that such forward-looking statements be subject to the safe harbors created thereby with respect to, among other things, the financial condition, results of operations, plans, objectives, future performance and business of AMCORE. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. These statements are based upon beliefs and assumptions of AMCORE's management and on information currently available to such management. The use of the words "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "plan", "estimate", "should", "may", "will" or similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and AMCORE undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events.

Contemplated, projected, forecasted or estimated results in such forward-looking statements involve certain inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of factors -- many of which are beyond the ability of the Company to control or predict -- could cause actual results to differ materially from those in its forward-looking statements. These factors include, among others, the following possibilities: (I) heightened competition, including specifically the intensification of price competition, the entry of new competitors and the formation of new products by new or existing competitors; (II) adverse state, local and federal legislation and regulation or adverse findings or rulings made by local, state or federal regulators or agencies regarding AMCORE and its operations; (III) failure to obtain new customers and retain existing customers; (IV) inability to carry out marketing and/or expansion plans; (V) ability to attract and retain key executives or personnel; (VI) changes in interest rates including the effect of prepayments; (VII) general economic and business conditions which are less favorable than expected; (VIII) equity and fixed income market fluctuations; (IX) unanticipated changes in industry trends; (X) unanticipated changes in credit quality and risk factors; (XI) success in gaining regulatory approvals when required; (XII) changes in Federal Reserve Board monetary policies; (XIII) unexpected outcomes on existing or new litigation in which AMCORE, its subsidiaries, officers, directors or employees are named defendants; (XIV) technological changes; (XV) changes in accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America; (XVI) changes in assumptions or conditions affecting the application of "critical accounting estimates"; (XVII) inability of third-party vendors to perform critical services for the Company or its customers; (XVIII) disruption of operations caused by the conversion and installation of data processing systems; (XIX) adverse economic or business conditions affecting specific loan portfolio types in which the Company has a concentration, such as construction, land development and other land loans; (XX) zoning restrictions or other limitations at the local level, which could prevent limited branch offices from transitioning to full-service facilities; (XXI) possible changes in the creditworthiness of customers and value of collateral and the possible impairment of collectibility of loans;(XXII) changes in lending terms to the Company and the Bank by the Federal Reserve, Federal Home Loan Bank, or any other regulatory agency or third party; and, (XXIII) the recently enacted Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, and the various programs the U.S. Treasury and the banking regulators are implementing to address capital and liquidity issues in the banking system, all of which may have significant effects on the Company and the financial services industry, the exact nature and extent of which cannot be determined at this time.

This news release was distributed by GlobeNewswire, www.globenewswire.com

SOURCE: AMCORE Financial, Inc.


AMCORE Financial, Inc.
For media inquiries:
Katherine Taylor, Investor Relations Manager
815-961-7164
For financial inquiries:
Judith Carre Sutfin, Executive Vice President and CFO
815-961-7081


Bloggers Note: And I cant get my mortgage holder, $hitiFinancial, to lower my interest rates from 8 3/4%!! Read all about my "$hiti-Wars" here; http://fraudulenttransactions.blogspot.com/2009/06/hope-dashed-hitiwars-cont.html


http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewContent.act?clipid=317659674&mode=cnc&tag=3.8218%3Ficx_id%3DNewsfeed96645567

Investors "Charmed" Out of $$$$$




Taken with his charm, investors saw money vanish
Posted to: Business Crime Norfolk WexTrust Capital

Joseph Shereshevsky grew up in Brooklyn’s Borough Park, pictured above in August. The New York City neighborhood is known for its large Orthodox Jewish community and abundance of synagogues. (David B. Hollingsworth | The Virginian-Pilot)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Joseph Shereshevsky was arrested at his home in Norfolk on federal charges of securities fraud. The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed separate civil charges of securities fraud.


The case
The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged that Joseph Shereshevsky, Steven W. Byers and their company, WexTrust Capital, bilked nearly 1,200 investors by diverting at least $100 million to unauthorized uses in a Ponzi-like scheme.

Movement of funds at WexTrust
Federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission contend that WexTrust Capital raised more than $255 million from investors for specific projects but diverted more than $100 million to unauthorized uses.
In the indictment of Joseph Shereshevsky and Steven W. Byers, federal prosecutors call attention to a WexTrust offering four years ago that raised slightly more than $9 million. WexTrust, according to the indictment, told investors that it would use the money to buy seven specific buildings for lease to the federal government. WexTrust never bought the buildings, prosecutors said, but led investors to believe that the transactions had been completed by sending them deceptive financial statements and tax documents.

Ponzi-like scheme
Rather than putting investors’ funds in segregated accounts and using them for specific investments, WexTrust routinely shifted the funds to unauthorized uses, according to charges by federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission. These practices took on the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme because WexTrust used funds raised from some of its later offerings to pay what it promised investors in its earlier offerings, prosecutors and the SEC say.

Event's in Joseph Shereshevsky's life

1956: Born in Brooklyn
1993: Pleads guilty in New York state court to attempted grand larceny
1994: Indicted in federal court in New York for trying to defraud a bank by attempting to deposit and cash $328,000 in stolen checks; pleads guilty but fails to show up for sentencing
Late 1990s: Changes name from Shereshevsky to Heller
1999: Takes a job in Newport News maintaining an apartment building, gradually takes on other responsibilities for the building owner
2000: Marries Elka Verschleisser, a Norfolk native who was living in Baltimore
2001: Changes his name back to Shereshevsky
2003: Joins WexTrust Capital, becomes chief operating officer, opens a WexTrust office in Norfolk
Aug. 11, 2008: Arrested at his home in Norfolk on federal charges of securities fraud. The Securities and Exchange Commission files separate civil charges of securities fraud. At the SEC’s request, the U.S. District Court in Manhattan freezes the assets of WexTrust and Shereshevsky and appoints a receiver to oversee these assets.
Aug. 13, 2008: A federal magistrate in Norfolk declines to release Shereshevsky on bail, citing the risk that he may not appear for trial. Shereshevsky is transferred to a federal detention facility in Brooklyn.
Sept. 2, 2008: Denies wrongdoing and asks the court to dismiss the complaint in response to SEC charges
Nov. 24, 2008: Pleads not guilty to criminal charges of securities and mail fraud


By Tom Shean
The Virginian-Pilot
© June 28, 2009
Joseph Shereshevsky is a schlub who worked hard to come off as a mensch. Turns out, he might be a ganif who ripped off many in his greater mishpuchah.

He went by Yossi. Shereshevsky came to Hampton Roads 10 years ago, telling some that he wanted to put an unsavory past behind him.

Overweight, balding and often disheveled - a classic schlub - Shereshevsky quickly gained entry to Hampton Roads' Orthodox Jewish community by applying his apparent piety and knowledge of Judaism. He was invited to join B'nai Israel, an Orthodox congregation in Norfolk's Ghent neighborhood, and married a woman from an influential family.

Already involved with real estate, Shereshevsky opened the Norfolk office of a Chicago-based investment company, WexTrust Capital, and became its chief operating officer and a part owner.

As Shereshevsky accumulated the trappings of wealth, he made a name for himself with his charity and hospitality.

Yossi came off as a real mensch, or good guy in Yiddish.

Then, his carefully cultivated image evaporated.

On Monday, Aug. 11, the FBI arrested the 52-year-old Shereshevsky at his home in Norfolk. WexTrust's chairman and CEO, Steven W. Byers of Oak Brook, Ill., was arrested there. Federal prosecutors in New York charged the two men with criminal securities fraud.

In a separate action, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged that Shereshevsky, Byers and WexTrust bilked nearly 1,200 investors, including many Orthodox Jews. The company and its two executives, the SEC said, diverted at least $100 million to unauthorized uses in a Ponzi-like scheme.

At the first Saturday service after Shereshevsky's arrest, Rabbi Chaim Silver reminded the B'nai Israel congregation that Judaism forbids lashon hara, otherwise known as gossip or evil speech.

Several members of the local Orthodox community have privately expressed anger and embarrassment over the Shereshevsky allegations. The man they thought was a good guy now stands accused of being a ganif - a thief in Yiddish - who used his knowledge of Judaism to swindle his mishpuchah - his Orthodox family.



From his 22nd-floor office in the Dominion Tower, Shereshevsky helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars for WexTrust projects, including office buildings, apartment complexes, warehouses and even diamond-mining ventures in southern Africa.

Now unable to make his $10 million bail, Shereshevsky remains in federal custody in New York. He faces 25 years in prison on the criminal charges if convicted. A trial has not been scheduled. His assets and those of his wife are frozen, but WexTrust victims have been told they are unlikely to recover more than a fraction of what they invested.

When arraigned in November on the criminal charges, Shereshevsky pleaded not guilty. In response to the SEC's charges, he denied wrongdoing and asked in September that its complaint be dismissed. Shereshevsky contends that he relied on the expertise of a WexTrust officer who had authority and control over each of the investments cited by the SEC. He did not respond to a letter from The Virginian-Pilot requesting an interview for this story.

Many of the details in this story come from court documents in the SEC and federal cases and other public records where Shereshevsky is named, as well as interviews with those who knew him in Hampton Roads and New York.



Shereshevsky grew up in Brooklyn's Borough Park, a New York City neighborhood known for its large Orthodox Jewish community and abundance of synagogues.

His father, now deceased, was a highly regarded rabbi and scholar, and the younger Shereshevsky attended a respected yeshiva, where students concentrate on the study of classical Jewish texts.

While in his 20s, Shereshevsky began working in the diamond business and raising a family in Brooklyn. He was smart and a skilled chess player, said Don Greenstein, a retired math teacher who belongs to the synagogue Shereshevsky attended.

Shereshevsky had a knack for making people feel at ease, and he could be generous with his money, Greenstein said. When his older brother was in a car accident that made him a quadriplegic, Shereshevsky helped pay for his brother's care, Greenstein recalled. "I remember, he often tipped the guy who delivered medical supplies to the home."

Shereshevsky, he said, enjoyed betting on pro football, especially on the New York Giants and Jets. Financial problems related to gambling derailed his career and marriage in the early 1990s, said Greenstein, adding that Shereshevsky still owes him $50,000.

He attracted attention in New York's large Orthodox community for refusing for years to give his first wife a get, or divorce.

In 1993, he pleaded guilty to a state charge of attempted grand larceny. In his plea agreement, Shereshevsky described having someone threatened with physical injury because "this guy owed me money for approximately four years."

In 1994, Shereshevsky was charged in a Manhattan federal court with bank fraud after attempting to deposit and cash $320,000 of stolen checks. He pleaded guilty later that year to one count of bank fraud but failed to show up for sentencing.

At some point, he left for Israel.



When he returned to the United States, Shereshevsky set about the task of reinventing himself. He took the last name Heller, his mother's maiden name, and, instead of returning to Brooklyn, he used his connections to line up a job at a Newport News apartment complex in 1999.

His transformation was interrupted briefly when he was arrested in March and sent back to New York for sentencing in the bank fraud case. Because of his earlier cooperation with federal prosecutors on another case, the judge sentenced him to two years' "supervised release" and ordered him to repay the bank nearly $39,000. He returned to Newport News.

The owner of the apartment complex promoted Shereshevsky to apartment manager. By 2000, he was overseeing apartment complexes in Norfolk, Portsmouth, Newport News and Petersburg and scouting for real estate investments for his boss.

The owner bought older apartment buildings with plans to upgrade them, "but that never came to pass," said Beverly Jones, a Suffolk property manager who worked with Shereshevsky at the time. She left the company, she said, because it routinely cut corners and Shereshevsky made her uncomfortable at work. "I felt like I was working for the mob," she said.

While living in Newport News, Shereshevsky began hanging out at a Norfolk deli, The Kosher Place Cafe & Market on 22nd Street in Ghent. He was in his element there, getting to know the employees and other regular patrons, talking about food - a favorite topic - and faith.

"I took a liking to him because of his deep knowledge of Judaism," said one Norfolk businessman who befriended Shereshevsky. "He was personable and fun to be around."

This person and others described their dealings with Shereshevsky on the condition that their names not be used. Many others simply declined to discuss him.

Shereshevsky was invited to join the nearby B'nai Israel synagogue, which serves about 225 Orthodox families. He met Elka Verschleisser, a Norfolk native who had been living in Baltimore. Verschleisser is a member of the Peck family, which has been influential in the region's Jewish community and in business circles. The two married in 2000.

"That gave him clout," said a WexTrust investor who knows the couple well. For some Orthodox Jews, their trust in Shereshevsky became absolute, the investor said.

But there were questions, mostly about his use of different last names. He changed his name from Heller back to Shereshevsky in January 2001. He explained that he adopted a different name because he had done things that he wasn't proud of and was trying to make a fresh start, the businessman who befriended him recalled.

In Judaism, "you give everyone the benefit of the doubt," the man added. "He got a bye to reinvent himself. That's why he was able to fit into this community."



As the doors to B'nai Israel opened, so did new opportunities.

During his travels, Shereshevsky met Stev en W. Byers, a Chicago real estate investor who helped finance some of the apartment complexes that Shereshevsky managed. Byers and an associate had launched WexTrust Capital in 2003 and brought Shereshevsky aboard as a partner to help them raise money. Two years later, Byers and Shereshevsky set up a securities brokerage in Norfolk to handle offerings of WexTrust investments.

Shereshevsky's education was limited to high school and the yeshiva, his wife testified at his bail hearing. And he wasn't licensed to sell securities, according to the SEC. What he had was a combination of street smarts and connections, many in the local Jewish community.

He befriended Yosef Friedman, B'nai Israel's rabbi at the time, and his stature in the congregation grew.

People could see he was a success. In 2007, he and his wife, Elka, received more than $1.2 million in commissions from sales of

WexTrust investments on top of the salaries the couple collected.

And Shereshevsky was charitable. He, along with his wife and their two children, opened their million-dollar Maury Avenue home to members of their congregation for Friday evening Shabbat. He helped establish an Orthodox day school in Portsmouth named after his father, the Rabbi Chaim Shereshevsky Institute of Mesorah Learning. He sponsored a summer day camp for local children. He sent a private jet to Jamaica to rescue an Orthodox teen who said he was being abused at a reform school. He and his wife made loans to WexTrust employees and paid for relatives' utilities and auto repairs.

When it appeared two years ago that members of the Maury High School band would have to pay for their seats at some of the Norfolk high school's football games, Shereshevsky donated $1,800.

"Every Saturday, when we go to the synagogue, these kids are out there practicing" on the Maury field, Shereshevsky told a Virginian-Pilot reporter when he announced his donation.

He seemed like a good guy, said one man whose elderly mother had been a frequent guest at the Shereshevsky home. She put her retirement savings into a WexTrust real estate investment five years ago despite her son's warning that it was too risky for a widow in her 80s and that the promised returns seemed too good to be true. She refused to move her money, the son said. "I stopped bugging her about it."

When some prospective investors learned that Shereshevsky had served time in prison, they demanded an explanation before committing any money. He told them he had been jailed briefly over a child-custody dispute with his first wife and dismissed the episode as "no big deal," said one local investor. They believed him.

At WexTrust, Shereshevsky assembled a sales team that included the scions of some of the region's prominent Orthodox families. They promoted WexTrust to their relatives and friends.

Stewart Smokler invested $21,000 in a commercial real estate project in 2003, he said. The investment paid off, so the 71-year-old Virginia Beach resident made others and recommended WexTrust to friends.

He went to work for WexTrust in 2004. He estimated that the company had about 20 employees in Norfolk at that time, including eight who worked on sales of investments.

The company took out ads in the Jewish Press and on a weekly radio show on WNIS-AM hosted by Paul "The Crunchman" Clemmons, a former mortgage broker. The ads lasted only a short time, but Clemmons invested with WexTrust himself and recommended the company to individuals who sought his advice.

"I had a client who said they had been listening to Paul and they were about to buy an investment property in Sandbridge; they were neighbors and friends and did their due diligence and invested in WexTrust real estate instead," Smokler said.

Smokler believed in WexTrust. He stands to lose a half-million dollars from his WexTrust investments and still wonders whether the company's demise was because of fraud or mismanagement.

"I really thought until the very end that it was a legitimate business," he said.



WexTrust raised more than $255 million, much of it for real estate but some for high-yield loan funds and commodity funds. More than $40 million went to diamond mines in southern Africa.

In separate allegations of securities fraud, federal prosecutors in New York and the SEC cited how WexTrust raised funds for specific projects and routinely shifted the money to unauthorized uses.

The criminal case cites an offering in which WexTrust raised $9 million from investors and promised to buy seven specific buildings and rent them to the federal government.

WexTrust never bought the buildings and put the money to other uses, prosecutors allege. However, investors were led to believe that the transactions took place because WexTrust sent them deceptive cash-flow statements and tax documents for GSA Investors LLC.

"The commingling was systematic. It was extensive," Timothy J. Coleman, WexTrust's court-appointed receiver, told a meeting of WexTrust investors in Chesapeake in April. "It started from Day One and continued all the way up to August 2008."

Before then, erratic payments to investors triggered complaints and concerns. In a May 2008 complaint to the Illinois attorney general, an unidentified investor wrote: "I feel their house of cards is about to collapse, leaving investors holding the bag."

A deteriorating real estate market last year made it increasingly difficult for WexTrust to pay what it promised to investors.

In March 2008, Shereshevsky warned Byers in an e-mail that they would have to operate the company differently.

"We have faked it until we made it for long enough and now we must clean up," Shereshevsky said, according to e-mail excerpts that the SEC included in its complaint against Shereshevsky, Byers and WexTrust.

The SEC began an examination of WexTrust Securities' New York office in April 2008. On Aug. 1,

Wachovia Bank froze several of WexTrust's accounts in response to a Justice Department notice.

On Aug. 11, the FBI apprehended Shereshevsky. He was leaving that day for Israel and England.

He appeared to have no return tickets.

Tom Shean, (757) 446-2379, tom.shean@pilotonline.com





http://hamptonroads.com/2009/06/taken-his-charm-investors-saw-money-vanish

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Big Banks Taking Over / Swallowing Up Small Failed Banks

Which of course means fewer but BIGGER (and more powerful) banks;











State shuts down Pine City's Horizon Bank - Sterns Takes Over
Anthony Souffle, Star Tribune

Real estate losses hobbled the bank. Its locations in Pine City and North Branch will reopen this morning, operated by Stearns Bank.

By CHRIS SERRES and JENNIFER BJORHUS, Star Tribune staff writers

Last update: June 26, 2009 - 11:15 PM

Horizon became the second bank to fail in Minnesota since the advent of the real estate crisis and the first to be shuttered by order of state officials since the 1980s. In May 2008, the FDIC shut down First Integrity Bank in Staples after it was hobbled in part by failed real estate investments in Florida.

Nationally, 43 banks have failed so far this year as banks battle sliding property values and rising delinquency rates on commercial mortgages and construction loans made during the housing boom.

Stearns Bank of St. Cloud bought most of Horizon's deposits and assets for an undisclosed sum and is immediately reopening Horizon's locations in Pine City and North Branch today under the Stearns Bank name.

"We want to get the word out that their money is safe," said Janet Kincaid, an FDIC ombudsman who was at the bank Friday evening.

With assets of just $87.6 million, Horizon was one of Minnesota's smaller community banks. But its fate has been the talk of Pine City (population 3,103) where nearly everyone, it seems, has had some dealing with the bank.

"There's a lot of toxic assets," said Norm Skalicky, CEO and major owner of Stearns Bank, who was in Pine City on Friday. "Everybody was on kind of a spending spree. That has to get flushed out, I guess."

Horizon employees didn't know about the takeover until a team of Commerce Department and FDIC workers arrived about 6 p.m.

Shortly before 7 p.m., two contractors showed up to cover up the green Horizon Bank sign in front of the company's headquarters with a white plastic tarp that said Stearns Bank. About 9 p.m. they began dismantling the Horizon sign with flat bars. The parking lot was packed with new rental vehicles driven by more than 50 FDIC staff members who could be seen inside the bank rifling through stacks of documents with cans of Coke nearby and chicken dinners on paper plates.

Nearby motorists slowed to gawk at the traffic in and out of the building.

"It will be a late night for everybody," Skalicky said.

Horizon is owned by Leonard J. Ouradnik, 75, of Montgomery, a town near Faribault. He could not be reached for comment. Horizon's current acting president, Tom Palmer, also couldn't be contacted.

The FDIC has agreed to pick up most of the future potential losses on $65.1 million, or about 80 percent, of Horizon's $87.6 million in assets. That insulates Stearns Bank from the problems that caused Horizon to fail, said FDIC spokesman David Barr.

Stearns paid $520,500 for Horizon's deposits of $69.4 million and an undisclosed sum for the bank's assets. Stearns Bank has just over $1 billion in assets and eight branches.

Horizon's closure and sale will cost the FDIC $33.5 million.

Neither Barr nor the Department of Commerce would discuss Horizon's problems, but the bank had a significant concentration of loans backed by real estate. Nonperforming commercial real estate loans stood at $3.3 million at the end of the first quarter, equal to about 4 percent of its assets and three times its Tier 1 capital, according to an analysis by Foresight Analytics in Oakland, Calif. Tier 1 capital is a key measure of a bank's ability to absorb losses.

jennifer.bjorhus@startribune.com • 612-673-4683 cserres@startribune.com • 612-673-4308


http://www.startribune.com/business/49248437.html?elr=KArksUUUU

Friday, June 26, 2009

Predatory Equity

Click on title above to learn what it is and how to identify it in your neighborhood

http://ow.ly/ao6M

Thursday, June 25, 2009

The Bloodless Coup of the Global Financial Stability Board: From Guidelines to Rules

Posted: June 24, 2009 11:39 AM
Ellen Brown / HuffPost


You must be a pirate for the Pirate's Code to apply and you're not, and the code is more of what you call guidelines than actual rules.



-- The evil Captain Barbossa who stole the Black Pearl, in Pirates of the Caribbean

Buried on page 83 of the 89-page Report on Financial Regulatory Reform issued by the U.S. Administration on June 17 is a recommendation that the new Financial Stability Board "strengthen" and "institutionalize" its mandate to "promote global financial stability." Financial stability is a worthy goal, but the devil is in the details. Some see the new agency, which is based in the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland, as the latest sinister development in a centuries-old consolidation of power by an international financial oligarchy.

When the G20 leaders met in London on April 2, 2009, they agreed to expand the powers of the old Financial Stability Forum (FSF) into this new Financial Stability Board (FSB). The FSF was chaired by the General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements and was set up in 1999 to serve in a merely advisory capacity for the G7 (a group of finance ministers formed from the seven major industrialized nations). The new FSB has been expanded to include all G20 members (19 nations plus the EU) and it has real teeth, imposing "obligations" and "commitments" on its members. What is the FSB's mandate, what are its expanded powers, and who is in charge?

The Shadowy Financial Stability Board

An article in The London Guardian gives these details:

The secretariat is based at the Bank for International Settlements' headquarters in Basel, Switzerland.
To the wary, this is not a comforting sign. The BIS has a dark and controversial history. Prof. Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton's mentor at Georgetown University, said in Tragedy and Hope that the BIS was created to be the apex of "a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole." The goal was "[control] in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences."

The Financial Stability Forum is chaired by Mario Draghi, governor of the Bank of Italy.
Draghi was director general of the Italian treasury from 1991 to 2001, where he was responsible for widespread privatization (sell-off of government holdings to private investors). From January 2002 to January 2006, he was a partner at Goldman Sachs on Wall Street, another controversial player.

The regulator . . . will cooperate with the IMF, the Washington-based body that monitors countries' financial health, lending funds if needed.
The IMF is an international banking organization that is also controversial. Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist for the World Bank, charges it with ensnaring Third World countries in a debt trap from which they cannot escape. Debtors unable to pay are bound by "conditionalities" that include a forced sell-off of national assets to private investors in order to service their loans.

What will the regulator oversee? All 'systemically important' financial institutions, instruments and markets.
The term "systemically important" is not defined. Will it include such systemically important institutions as national treasuries, and such systemically important markets as gold, oil and food?

The body will . . . act as a clearing house for information-sharing and contingency planning for the benefit of its members.
In some contexts, information-sharing is called illegal collusion. Would the information-sharing here include such things as secret agreements among central banks to buy or sell particular currencies, with the concomitant power to support or collapse targeted local economies? Consider the short-selling of the Mexican peso by collusive action in 1995, the short-selling of Southeast Asian currencies in 1998, and the collusion among central banks to support the U.S. dollar in July of last year -- good for the dollar and the big players with inside information perhaps, but not so good for the small investors who reasonably bet on "market forces," bought gold or foreign currencies, and lost their shirts.

To prevent another debt bubble, the new body will recommend financial companies maintain provisions against credit losses and may impose constraints on borrowing.
What sort of constraints? The Basel Accords imposed by the BIS have not generally worked out well. The first Basel Accord, issued in 1998, was blamed for inducing a depression in Japan from which that country has yet to recover; and the Second Basel Accord and its associated mark-to-market rule have been blamed for bringing on the current credit crisis, from which the U.S. and the world have yet to recover. These charges have been explored at length elsewhere.

The Amorphous 12 International Standards and Codes

Most troubling, perhaps, is this vague parenthetical reference in a press release issued by the BIS titled "Financial Stability Forum Re-established as the Financial Stability Board":



As obligations of membership, member countries and territories commit to . . . implement international financial standards (including the 12 key International Standards and Codes) . . .

This is not just friendly advice from an advisory board. It is a commitment to comply, so you would expect some detailed discussion concerning what those standards entail. However, a search of the major media reveals virtually nothing. The 12 key International Standards and Codes are left undefined and undiscussed. The FSB website lists them, but it is vague. The Standards and Codes cover broad areas that are apparently subject to modification as the overseeing committees see fit. They include:

Money and financial policy transparency
Fiscal policy transparency
Data dissemination
Insolvency
Corporate governance
Accounting
Auditing
Payment and settlement
Market integrity
Banking supervision
Securities regulation
Insurance supervision

Take "fiscal policy transparency" as an example. The "Code of Good Practices on Fiscal Transparency" was adopted by the IMF Interim Committee in 1998. The "synoptic description" says:

The code contains transparency requirements to provide assurances to the public and to capital markets that a sufficiently complete picture of the structure and finances of government is available so as to allow the soundness of fiscal policy to be reliably assessed.
We learn that members are required to provide a "picture of the structure and finances of government" that is complete enough for an assessment of its "soundness" -- but an assessment by whom, and what if a government fails the test? Is an unelected private committee based in the BIS allowed to evaluate the "structure and function" of particular national governments and, if they are determined to have fiscal policies that are not "sound," to impose "conditionalities" and "austerity measures" of the sort that the IMF is notorious for imposing on Third World countries?

For three centuries, private international banking interests have brought governments in line by blocking them from issuing their own currencies and requiring them to borrow banker-issued "banknotes" instead. "Allow me to issue and control a nation's currency," Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild famously said in 1791, "and I care not who makes its laws." The real rebellion of the American colonists in 1776, according to Benjamin Franklin, was against a foreign master who forbade the colonists from issuing their own money and required that taxes be paid in gold. The colonists, not having gold, had to borrow gold-backed banknotes from the British bankers instead. The catch was that the notes were created on the "fractional reserve" system, allowing the bankers to issue up to ten times as many notes as they actually had gold, essentially creating them out of thin air just as the colonists were doing. The result was not only to lock the colonists into debt to foreign bankers but to propel the nation into a crippling depression. The colonists finally rebelled and reverted to issuing their own currency. Funding a revolution against a major world power with money they printed themselves, they succeeded in defeating their oppressors and winning their independence.

Political colonialism is now a thing of the past, but under the new FSB guidelines, nations can still be held in feudalistic subservience to foreign masters. Consider this scenario: Like in the American colonies, the new FSB rules precipitate a global depression the likes of which have never before been seen. XYZ country wakes up to the fact that all of this is unnecessary -- that it could be creating its own money, freeing itself from the debt trap, rather than borrowing from bankers who create money on computer screens and charge interest for the privilege of borrowing it. But this realization comes too late. The FSB has ruled that for a government to issue money is an impermissible "merging of the public and private sectors" and an "unsound banking practice" forbidden under the "12 Key International Standards and Codes." XYZ is forced into line. National sovereignty has been abdicated to a private committee, with no say by the voters.

A Bloodless Coup?

Suspicious observers might say that this is how you pull off a private global dictatorship: (1) create a global crisis; (2) appoint an "advisory body" to retain and maintain "stability"; and then (3) "formalize" the advisory body as global regulator. By the time the people wake up to what has happened, it's too late. Marilyn Barnewall, who was dubbed by Forbes Magazine the "dean of American private banking," wrote in an April 2009 article titled "What Happened to American Sovereignty at G-20?":

It seems the world's bankers have executed a bloodless coup and now represent all of the people in the world. . . . President Obama agreed at the G20 meeting in London to create an international board with authority to intervene in U.S. corporations by dictating executive compensation and approving or disapproving business management decisions. Under the new Financial Stability Board, the United States has only one vote. In other words, the group will be largely controlled by European central bankers. My guess is, they will represent themselves, not you and not me and certainly not America.
Adoption of the FSB was never voted on by the public, either individually or through their legislators. The G20 Summit has been called "a New Bretton Woods," referring to agreements entered into in 1944 establishing new rules for international trade. But Bretton Woods was put in place by Congressional Executive Agreement, requiring a majority vote of the legislature; and it more properly should have been done by treaty, requiring a two-thirds vote of the Senate, since it was an international agreement binding on the nation. The same should be mandated before imposing the will of the BIS-based Financial Stability Board on the U.S., its banks and its businesses.

Even with a two-thirds Senate vote, before Congress gives its approval it should draft legislation ensuring that the checks and balances imposed by our Constitution are built into the agreement. The legislatures of the member nations could be required to elect a representative body to provide oversight and take corrective measures as needed, with that body's representatives answerable to their national electorates. If we are to avoid abdicating our national sovereignty to a private foreign banking elite, we need to insist on compliance with the constitutional and legal mandates on which our country was founded.

Follow Ellen Brown on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ellenhbrown


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/the-bloodless-coup-of-the_b_219653.html